The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Illustrated Edition). Robert Thomas Wilson

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      CHAPTER V.

       THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE.

       Table of Contents

      Difficulties of the Early Married Life of Prince Albert—His Unpopularity in Certain Quarters—Attempt to Suppress Duelling in the Army—Position of the Prince in the Royal Household—Want of Supervision in the Management of the Palace—Introduction of Reforms, on the Initiative of Prince Albert—Duties Assumed by the Prince—Domestic Life—Post Office Reform—Defective State of the Service Previous to 1840—Rowland Hill and the Penny Post—Opposition to the New Scheme—Introduction of the Lower Rate of Postage—General Features and Effects of the Change—Measure for the Protection of Children Employed in Chimney-sweeping—Attempt of Edward Oxford to Shoot the Queen—Appointment of Prince Albert as Regent under certain Eventualities—Life and Studies at Windsor—Birth of the Princess Royal—Devotion of the Prince to her Majesty—Christmas at Windsor (1840)—Christening of the Princess—Accident to Prince Albert—The Eastern Question: Turkey and Egypt—Removal of the Body of Napoleon I. from St. Helena to Paris—Rise and Development of the Agitation for Free Trade.

      Having stayed three days at Windsor Castle, her Majesty and the Prince returned to Buckingham Palace. On the 28th of February the Duke of Coburg left for Germany, and his son had now to enter on the ordinary routine of life, such as life is in that exalted station. The position of the Prince was no doubt extremely difficult, and at first it appeared almost unbearably irksome. Nothing could surpass the mutual love and confidence of the newly-wedded pair, and, as regarded the great mass of the English people, the bridegroom was popular. But he was scanned with jealous dislike by a large section of the aristocracy; he had not the particular kind of disposition best fitted for overcoming that dislike; and some of the incidents which preceded his arrival in England were certainly of a nature to vex and discourage. On the whole, he bore his probation well; yet we now know that, in private, he used expressions of annoyance which showed how deeply he had been wounded. His letter to the Queen, complaining of the appointment of Mr. Anson as his Private Secretary, was rather querulous in tone, however just in argument. In another letter to her Majesty, written from Brussels on the 1st of February, 1840, he spoke of the vote on Colonel Sibthorp’s amendment with respect to the annuity as “most unseemly”—which it clearly was not; and in May of the same year he wrote to his friend Prince Löwenstein that he was “only the husband, and not the master in the house.” All these opposing facts and feelings boded evil for the future.

      In some degree, the very virtues of Prince Albert’s character stood in the way of his rapidly making friends, though a feeling of respect was not slow in arising. His manners were reserved and distant, and people mistook for haughtiness what was nothing more than the disinclination of a reflective and sequestered nature to enter heartily into the promiscuous and not always very sincere intercourse of what is called general society. He was considered cold and ungenial, and it is probable that to some he really was so. To those whom he truly loved, and whose natures were sympathetic with his own, he could be a most delightful companion; but this, of course, was no compensation to courtiers who expected to find in him a facile man of the world, but whose frivolities repelled and wearied him. In truth, he was something of a formalist, and formalism is the quality, of all others, which generally makes Englishmen feel most uneasy. One of his favourite ideas was to promote the abolition of duelling in the British army by the substitution of courts of arbitration on questions of personal honour. The Duke of Wellington and other leaders gave some heed to this proposal; but it had no great prospect of success, and in time ceased to be talked about. Nevertheless, it must be allowed that the agitation of this subject by Prince Albert, in 1843, co-operated with other causes to put down the foolish and wicked practice against which his Royal Highness sought to make provision. When Queen Victoria ascended the throne, duelling was frequent. In twelve or thirteen years, it had almost entirely died out, killed by the ridicule and the awakened moral sense of all reasonable men.

      The question of the Prince’s position in the Royal Household was indisputably one of no little importance. The young husband possessed (as we find it stated by one well qualified to speak on the subject) “no independent authority by right of his position, and could exercise none, even within his own household, without trenching upon the privileges of others, who were not always disposed to admit of interference. This could scarcely fail to embarrass his position in the midst of a vast Royal establishment, which had inherited many of the abuses of former reigns, and where he found much of which he could not approve, but yet was without the power to rectify. And as behind every abuse there is always some one interested in maintaining it, he could not but be aware that he was regarded with no friendly eyes by those who were in that position, and who naturally dreaded the presence among them of one so visibly intolerant of worthlessness and incapacity.”10 The consequence was that the Prince sometimes found himself in collision with functionaries who would scarcely allow him any authority whatever, and especially with Madame Lehzen, then the Private Secretary of the Queen, who seems to have presumed too much on her Majesty’s affection for her former governess. Confusion and extravagance, delay and discomfort, reigned within the Palace; the Queen and the Prince were equally inconvenienced and annoyed; yet, although some reforms were effected at an earlier period, it was not until 1844 that the system was radically altered.

      There was in fact no master of the Royal dwelling, because there were too many masters. The control of affairs was divided by the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Master of the Horse; but no one of these was superior to the other two, and each acted in his department with entire independence. As their position was bound up with that of the Ministry, change was frequent, and an adverse vote in the House of Commons, on a question wholly political, would deprive the Queen of servants who were perhaps only just beginning to understand their work; for the appointments were made solely on party grounds, and